You thought last year was bad for auto production? It will be worse this year — before things get dramatically better.
That's the projection from IHS Markit, whose production and sales forecasts for light vehicles appear as a new feature, on Page 24.
IHS Markit says just more than 13 million light vehicles will be built in North America in 2021, a year that has been crippled by a global shortage of microchips. That would be down 0.2 percent from last year, when auto factories were closed for months in the spring because of the pandemic.
Production will rebound next year, IHS says. After that, IHS projects a steady increase to a record 18.2 million in 2024.